No, the law exists to further the law. In an ideal society, yes, YOU are part of THEY, but in ours, no. I'm sure, in the comment you originally replied to, THEY shot an innocent man to protect us all, right? Bullshit.
And civil liberty isn't about demanding the right to put a bullet in your head -- it's about the right to put a bullet in MY head. I'm all for getting rid of every fucking statist out there, but I would never support any objection to *not* being able to freely put a bullet in your head. It's a termination of YOUR rights.
If you believe that YOU are a THEY, you're wrong. You have totally bought in to the bullshit you are supposed to believe. WE do not make the laws. WE are the ones who get shot because we have long hair, or drive a beat up car, or, for gods sake, support the right to consume something "THEY" say you aren't supposed to consume.
Modern entertainment culture is totally about funneling canned emotion into your head, so you can shut your brain off for two hours and enjoy the ride. See my comments elsewhere in this thread.
I'm a chaos magician, myself, and have plenty of friends who are "witches", but I wasn't bothered at all by the name of the movie -- no more than I would be if it were the Blair Sysadmin Project, and an evil hacker lived in the woods and beat kids up with a Type 5 keyboard, and stored their heads in a hollowed-out washing machine drive. Stop taking yourself so seriously.:)
I use Frotz for my IF games under Linux. It's fairly advanced and powerful (as much as that is relevant to IF). The if-archive address has already been given, so I won't repeat it, but you might want to check out http://ifarchive.org. If you dig around on ftp.apple.asimov.net, you can find disk images of alot of old infocom games, if there are any you don't have. It takes some work, but you can make Z files from 'em which you can run right in Frotz. Or you can email me at infocom@devzero.org, and I'll hook you up.:)
Those who love Blair Witch, and those who don't. Personally, I'm in the first category. I saw it for again last night, and I can say that it's better the second time around.
What I have found, is when you take a sample of those who didn't like it, they seem to fall into four broad categories... "I don't like scary movies", "It wasn't scary", "Why are the characters so stupid", "What's with all the profanity." We can weed out the first category as irrelevant to this discussion.
The thing which has struck me most about the "it wasn't scary" types, is that they almost universally seem to think the movie would have been better with "something" in it. This is, imo, a direct offshoot of modern Hollywood film making in which computer generated special effects kill the need for active viewing and imagination, resulting in a sort of mental withering which must be provided all its stimulation. The thing which was so horrifying about BWP was it's total paranoia, and dread of the unknown. I am very jaded when it comes to horror movies, but I can safely say, this one scared the shit out of me. The one very mild scene of gore horrified me more than all the blood in all the special effects films ever created. But it doesn't have a horrible CGI monster leaping at at you, so it's not scary. Bah, says I.
As for the complaints about the characters not knowing how to survive in the woods, and not using the books they were so careful to show at the beginning, and being generally clueless, consider this: They were *film makers*, not survivalists. You get out in the woods, hungry and cold and scared shitless, and see if the first thing on *your* mind is "Let me read this book to find out I need to follow the river to civilization" -- which, by the way, sometimes fails you.
Then there are the folks who don't like the seemingly complusive profanity. It didn't even hit me, until after I saw it and heard people talking about it, because that is what is normal in conversation for my generation, especially in emotionally tense situations. When I get angry, or scared, or stressed, I probably use 'fuck' excessively, too. It's not the fault of the film makers, it's the fault of the generation, if there is any fault to be had. Personally, I don't give a shit.:)
The bottom line is, BWP is a great movie which has more psychological tension in it than anything which has come out of Hollywood in a long time, and which has earned some detractors because either they don't understand it, or they are so weaned on mental masturbation with special effects that they can't appreciate good, real horror.
Potato (Debian 2.2) will hopefully be released before the end of the year. There is discussion on debian-devel of forking a freeze of 2.1 now and creating an intering distribution to fill in the gap.
Potato is supposed to ship with deity, the replacement for dselect -- it is a front-end to apt. Apt itself is going to gain much new functionality, including a very useful 'build from source' option.
I'm very looking forward to the deity/improved apt combo -- apt is a wonderful tool already in Slink, and much nicer than dpkg.
Finally, Debian is a contraction of the names "Deborah" and "Ian" -- check the website.:)
Then I couldn't remap it to escape for happy vi-ing!
Why they are doing it.
on
New Cyberlaws
·
· Score: 1
There have been numerous people posting questions asking what they hope to accomplish, and why on earth people would focus on this, knowing they can't hope to control all the information on the internet. The cold hard honest answer, is that it is the thrashings of a doomed, failing policy-making body.
For close to a full century, there has been a pointless persecution of marijuana. Why didn't we learn the lesson from the 20s and the prohibition era? Prohibition simply doesn't work.
The point is, the whole "war on drugs" is a bogus, hopeless cash-cow which has reached far beyond the end of its usefulness. Look at murder rates for this century -- they parellel the level of fanatacism in "ridding" our streets of these substances.
It's not working. But the current regieme of the hyprocritcal white male bastard cannot admit that it has spend a century doing something it cannot do -- so you see even more gregious violations of our basic freedoms in the name of "protecting" us from ourselves. This is just one in a long line of ever-more outrageous assaults, all in the name of the 'war on drugs'.
And it's all become one mammoth cash-cow now. How many people are on the payroll simply to keep me from putting substances in my body? It's in all their interest to keep things the way they are, even if it means ever more eroding of our freedoms (hey, it goes right in hand with what the FBI is trying to do, cool!), more people clogging up our prisons, more people getting their guts blasted out whiles the pigs are out arresting people for smoking weed, more of everything we need to do away with.
It's also a strike against the internet. The 19th century beaurocracies of might and steel fear the internet, because they cannot control the flow of information, so all their best-laid iron fist plans get destroyed. It's a fear, and a hatred, which they cannot tolerate -- the government must put it's greedy fist all over the internet, so it can continue to control the minds of the populace.
He who controls information, controlls the past, present, and future. And they don't want it in our hands.
Two instances in one case of the death throes of a system that will soon perish. I'll be the first to put 'em up against the wall when the time comes.
Nope. That one fails, too. It opened a JavaScript window without asking me first, so I go an close it without even looking at it, only to find out the only thing on the page is a link to re-open the window. Click. It goes away too.
When will people learn: *I* decide where I put my windows, and what I have open. If YOU try to decide for me, I am leaving your site now.
Hrm... Well. Hot and humid, yeah, but you get used to it. As for Jesse Helms, that's true. He's a wart on the ass of humanity, and of the south. As a side note, I nearly got arrested for defacing public property for hanging mocking Anti-Helms posters outside his office, along with near the state house and other places in Raleigh... anyway....
For those of you who are flaming North Carolina, citing geography as a reason for moving, bear this in mind:
The Raliegh/Durham area of North Carlina, including RTP (Research Triangle Park) is a very modern, progressive area, rife with high-tech companies. It is commonly regarded as "Silicon Valley Easy", is rated consistently as one of the best places in the nation to live, is in proximity to three major universities (Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and NC State), as well as several others within a couple hundred miles, and is, generally speaking, a very nice place.
I'd rather live in the RDU area than any place on the west coast... it won't fall into the ocean any time soon.:)
Re:So does this change the debian situation?
on
qt 2.0 released
·
· Score: 1
I haven't actually read the QPL yet, however, it sounds like it is compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (and therefore, the Open Source Definition), so I don't see why not.
My story has been posted on Linux Today and has drawn a good bit of attention. I've received many emails from people who've written to BS, provided suggestions for me, etc. A reporter from an online new source has contacted me, with plans to do a story about problems in general with telcos, linux, and DSL. Hopefully, BellSouth will see the light of day soon.
Waitasec... Fractal Edge (http://edge.chaotika.net) doesn't have a town square! The closest thing is probably Ground Zero, but if you hang out there and try to chat, you're likely to get your ass fragged by some passing samurai or get taken out by a yak. I always preferred slipping into one of the side booths at the Sudden Death Bar and Grill. Anyway... *grin*
Just as a side note, I made a deck out of black and white mostly-commons which pissed off ALOT of people by taking out their big fearsome deck they'd spent beaucoup dollars on. gave me much pleasure...
Eh, bah I say. Once had a company try to recruit me with promises of $1000 for every criMosoft test I passed (in addition to payment of all test-related expenses). I turned it down without a thought.
My non-linux friends didn't get it. They saw me as being a nut for turning down multiple-grand bonuses. Fact of the matter is, I do not want to work in an institution that would OFFER such a thing. It indicates the worst of the PHB attitude which commercial licensing propagates.
Furthermore, I would consider it a moral compromise on my part to take such an offer. This is the part I didn't understand forementioned friends not grokking. I guess it's all computers to them.
Do not major in MIS. It is a major for those who have heard there is lots of money to be made in the computer industry, but don't have the smarts to slug it out in the trenches -- Computers for Dummies (and Suits).
One of the glories of the sysadmin trade is that there is not any one course of training to encapsulate it. Programming, networking, screwdriver jockeying, human interaction... you need to use a bit of it all.
My advice would be to major in whatever the hell you feel like. Hell, get a BA in Underwater Basketweaving. Then get out in the real world, take a couple hits, get some weight under your belt, and give it a shot. You'll know when you're ready.
OK. To all these people who are whining about "yet another stupid April Fools prank", here's a tidbit for you:
Joke RFCs on April 1st are a long standing tradition -- probably longer than many of you have been on the 'net. If you want some good reading, go to http://www.rfc-editor.org and search for the various RFCs from March 31 or April 1.
These are my *favorite* part of April Fools day, because they often have some real geek humor in them, as opposed to alot of the stupid pranks that get pulled.
Calling it a virus seems legitimate to me. The defining feature of a computer "virus" is self-propagation, which Melissa does quite profusely. The fact that it needs to be run through an intermediate step shouldn't detract from it self-perpetuating nature.
...how a total lack of intelligence can look incredibly much like a conspiracy?
MicroSoft: "NT! It's so incredibly easy to administer that all you need to know how to do is point and click!"
Yeah, ok. So where is the nifty pre-packaged little button labelled "bounce all incoming and outgoing messages with the target string in the message body back to sender, with an explanation for why it has been returned"?
It is impossible to make system administration doable by a trained monkey -- there are entirely too many contingencies.
On a similar note, RAD techniques and user coddling combined lead to this kind of thing -- incredibly overly-large, overly-featured, user-coddling pieces of bit-rotted sludge that leave massive doors open, which you cannot close because the so-called "administrators" are busy clicking around with their mice all day, and we keep the users stupid so they don't know that there's a better way.
In my view, RMS is incredibly arrogant, and the vast majority of Slashdot seems to be very immature. Granted, both of these are rather unfair statements.
As has been said earlier, arrogance among hackers is a well-known trait, especially in a culture such as ours. RMS is just living up to the personality profile. I do not begrudge him his desires at all -- I tend to agree with him alot. I just feel he could be a good deal more respectful and tactful in trying to get his way. But I'm not one to speak for arrogance; I tend to be highly arrogant myself at times.
As for Slashdot, I would like to think (and I feel it is true), that the majority of the readers are lurkers, and of a general clueful nature. But for the most part, of the ones who post, a high percentage are of the teenage know-it-all testosterone charged hate everyone who's different from you mindset, which just gets further complicated by the fact that many of them seem to believe that by just being able to install Red Hat, they are suddenly some part of a magical club in which they are a big fish. It bothers me to a high degree that Linux should be branded by these kinds of morons, where there are so many other worthwhile people out there who simply do not feel the need to prove their testicular fortitude by flaming about KDE/GNOME, RMS/ESR, or what have you, endlessly, day after day.
So, actually, I see a high degree of truth here. And I also consider it to be on par with the general level of stupidity and arrogance within the human race. It is our nature, for some sad reason.
The free software community had always been relatively closed and confined -- it seemed to only attract the cream of the crop. Now that it has become popular, every scum of the earth is drawn to it, especially those with a need to show their rebellion. The bigger a trend gets, the higher the SNR in it. We need to live with it if we ever want to achieve World Domination (which is actually not a goal I strive for -- I'd be happier with a smaller community where people are worth knowing, not unworth the bullet it would take to put them out of their misery.)
Slashdot Mirror
So why the "Linux Powered" logo on your NT-hosted web site? Hypocrite.
No, the law exists to further the law. In an ideal society, yes, YOU are part of THEY, but in ours, no. I'm sure, in the comment you originally replied to, THEY shot an innocent man to protect us all, right? Bullshit.
And civil liberty isn't about demanding the right to put a bullet in your head -- it's about the right to put a bullet in MY head. I'm all for getting rid of every fucking statist out there, but I would never support any objection to *not* being able to freely put a bullet in your head. It's a termination of YOUR rights.
If you believe that YOU are a THEY, you're wrong. You have totally bought in to the bullshit you are supposed to believe. WE do not make the laws. WE are the ones who get shot because we have long hair, or drive a beat up car, or, for gods sake, support the right to consume something "THEY" say you aren't supposed to consume.
Open your eyes, god damn it.
Ahem.
ME TOO!
Modern entertainment culture is totally about funneling canned emotion into your head, so you can shut your brain off for two hours and enjoy the ride. See my comments elsewhere in this thread.
I'm a chaos magician, myself, and have plenty of friends who are "witches", but I wasn't bothered at all by the name of the movie -- no more than I would be if it were the Blair Sysadmin Project, and an evil hacker lived in the woods and beat kids up with a Type 5 keyboard, and stored their heads in a hollowed-out washing machine drive. Stop taking yourself so seriously. :)
I use Frotz for my IF games under Linux. It's fairly advanced and powerful (as much as that is relevant to IF). The if-archive address has already been given, so I won't repeat it, but you might want to check out http://ifarchive.org. If you dig around on ftp.apple.asimov.net, you can find disk images of alot of old infocom games, if there are any you don't have. It takes some work, but you can make Z files from 'em which you can run right in Frotz. Or you can email me at infocom@devzero.org, and I'll hook you up. :)
*MILD SPOILERS AHEAD*
:)
Those who love Blair Witch, and those who don't. Personally, I'm in the first category. I saw it for again last night, and I can say that it's better the second time around.
What I have found, is when you take a sample of those who didn't like it, they seem to fall into four broad categories... "I don't like scary movies", "It wasn't scary", "Why are the characters so stupid", "What's with all the profanity." We can weed out the first category as irrelevant to this discussion.
The thing which has struck me most about the "it wasn't scary" types, is that they almost universally seem to think the movie would have been better with "something" in it. This is, imo, a direct offshoot of modern Hollywood film making in which computer generated special effects kill the need for active viewing and imagination, resulting in a sort of mental withering which must be provided all its stimulation. The thing which was so horrifying about BWP was it's total paranoia, and dread of the unknown. I am very jaded when it comes to horror movies, but I can safely say, this one scared the shit out of me. The one very mild scene of gore horrified me more than all the blood in all the special effects films ever created. But it doesn't have a horrible CGI monster leaping at at you, so it's not scary. Bah, says I.
As for the complaints about the characters not knowing how to survive in the woods, and not using the books they were so careful to show at the beginning, and being generally clueless, consider this: They were *film makers*, not survivalists. You get out in the woods, hungry and cold and scared shitless, and see if the first thing on *your* mind is "Let me read this book to find out I need to follow the river to civilization" -- which, by the way, sometimes fails you.
Then there are the folks who don't like the seemingly complusive profanity. It didn't even hit me, until after I saw it and heard people talking about it, because that is what is normal in conversation for my generation, especially in emotionally tense situations. When I get angry, or scared, or stressed, I probably use 'fuck' excessively, too. It's not the fault of the film makers, it's the fault of the generation, if there is any fault to be had. Personally, I don't give a shit.
The bottom line is, BWP is a great movie which has more psychological tension in it than anything which has come out of Hollywood in a long time, and which has earned some detractors because either they don't understand it, or they are so weaned on mental masturbation with special effects that they can't appreciate good, real horror.
My two cents.
Potato (Debian 2.2) will hopefully be released before the end of the year. There is discussion on debian-devel of forking a freeze of 2.1 now and creating an intering distribution to fill in the gap.
:)
Potato is supposed to ship with deity, the replacement for dselect -- it is a front-end to apt. Apt itself is going to gain much new functionality, including a very useful 'build from source' option.
I'm very looking forward to the deity/improved apt combo -- apt is a wonderful tool already in Slink, and much nicer than dpkg.
Finally, Debian is a contraction of the names "Deborah" and "Ian" -- check the website.
No caps lock? Eek!
Then I couldn't remap it to escape for happy vi-ing!
There have been numerous people posting questions asking what they hope to accomplish, and why on earth people would focus on this, knowing they can't hope to control all the information on the internet. The cold hard honest answer, is that it is the thrashings of a doomed, failing policy-making body.
For close to a full century, there has been a pointless persecution of marijuana. Why didn't we learn the lesson from the 20s and the prohibition era? Prohibition simply doesn't work.
The point is, the whole "war on drugs" is a bogus, hopeless cash-cow which has reached far beyond the end of its usefulness. Look at murder rates for this century -- they parellel the level of fanatacism in "ridding" our streets of these substances.
It's not working. But the current regieme of the hyprocritcal white male bastard cannot admit that it has spend a century doing something it cannot do -- so you see even more gregious violations of our basic freedoms in the name of "protecting" us from ourselves. This is just one in a long line of ever-more outrageous assaults, all in the name of the 'war on drugs'.
And it's all become one mammoth cash-cow now. How many people are on the payroll simply to keep me from putting substances in my body? It's in all their interest to keep things the way they are, even if it means ever more eroding of our freedoms (hey, it goes right in hand with what the FBI is trying to do, cool!), more people clogging up our prisons, more people getting their guts blasted out whiles the pigs are out arresting people for smoking weed, more of everything we need to do away with.
It's also a strike against the internet. The 19th century beaurocracies of might and steel fear the internet, because they cannot control the flow of information, so all their best-laid iron fist plans get destroyed. It's a fear, and a hatred, which they cannot tolerate -- the government must put it's greedy fist all over the internet, so it can continue to control the minds of the populace.
He who controls information, controlls the past, present, and future. And they don't want it in our hands.
Two instances in one case of the death throes of a system that will soon perish. I'll be the first to put 'em up against the wall when the time comes.
Nobody expects the Linux Inquisition!
Did you expect that? Huh? HUH!?
Nope. That one fails, too. It opened a JavaScript window without asking me first, so I go an close it without even looking at it, only to find out the only thing on the page is a link to re-open the window. Click. It goes away too.
When will people learn: *I* decide where I put my windows, and what I have open. If YOU try to decide for me, I am leaving your site now.
Hrm... Well. Hot and humid, yeah, but you get used to it. As for Jesse Helms, that's true. He's a wart on the ass of humanity, and of the south. As a side note, I nearly got arrested for defacing public property for hanging mocking Anti-Helms posters outside his office, along with near the state house and other places in Raleigh... anyway....
:)
I'm a Tar Heel fan, so mnyeah on the last one.
For those of you who are flaming North Carolina, citing geography as a reason for moving, bear this in mind:
:)
The Raliegh/Durham area of North Carlina, including RTP (Research Triangle Park) is a very modern, progressive area, rife with high-tech companies. It is commonly regarded as "Silicon Valley Easy", is rated consistently as one of the best places in the nation to live, is in proximity to three major universities (Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and NC State), as well as several others within a couple hundred miles, and is, generally speaking, a very nice place.
I'd rather live in the RDU area than any place on the west coast... it won't fall into the ocean any time soon.
I haven't actually read the QPL yet, however, it sounds like it is compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (and therefore, the Open Source Definition), so I don't see why not.
My money says you won't be able to run Linux.
My story has been posted on Linux Today and has drawn a good bit of attention. I've received many emails from people who've written to BS, provided suggestions for me, etc. A reporter from an online new source has contacted me, with plans to do a story about problems in general with telcos, linux, and DSL. Hopefully, BellSouth will see the light of day soon.
Waitasec... Fractal Edge (http://edge.chaotika.net) doesn't have a town square! The closest thing is probably Ground Zero, but if you hang out there and try to chat, you're likely to get your ass fragged by some passing samurai or get taken out by a yak. I always preferred slipping into one of the side booths at the Sudden Death Bar and Grill. Anyway... *grin*
See you on the edge...
Vp Synnr @ Fractal Edge
Just as a side note, I made a deck out of black and white mostly-commons which pissed off ALOT of people by taking out their big fearsome deck they'd spent beaucoup dollars on. gave me much pleasure...
Eh, bah I say. Once had a company try to recruit me with promises of $1000 for every criMosoft test I passed (in addition to payment of all test-related expenses). I turned it down without a thought.
My non-linux friends didn't get it. They saw me as being a nut for turning down multiple-grand bonuses. Fact of the matter is, I do not want to work in an institution that would OFFER such a thing. It indicates the worst of the PHB attitude which commercial licensing propagates.
Furthermore, I would consider it a moral compromise on my part to take such an offer. This is the part I didn't understand forementioned friends not grokking. I guess it's all computers to them.
*shrug*
Do not major in MIS. It is a major for those who have heard there is lots of money to be made in the computer industry, but don't have the smarts to slug it out in the trenches -- Computers for Dummies (and Suits).
One of the glories of the sysadmin trade is that there is not any one course of training to encapsulate it. Programming, networking, screwdriver jockeying, human interaction... you need to use a bit of it all.
My advice would be to major in whatever the hell you feel like. Hell, get a BA in Underwater Basketweaving. Then get out in the real world, take a couple hits, get some weight under your belt, and give it a shot. You'll know when you're ready.
Heh. Now watch and see if the moderators adjust your score on that post. Wouldn't it be ironic? :)
OK. To all these people who are whining about "yet another stupid April Fools prank", here's a tidbit for you:
Joke RFCs on April 1st are a long standing tradition -- probably longer than many of you have been on the 'net. If you want some good reading, go to http://www.rfc-editor.org and search for the various RFCs from March 31 or April 1.
These are my *favorite* part of April Fools day, because they often have some real geek humor in them, as opposed to alot of the stupid pranks that get pulled.
Consider yourself enlightened.
Calling it a virus seems legitimate to me. The defining feature of a computer "virus" is self-propagation, which Melissa does quite profusely. The fact that it needs to be run through an intermediate step shouldn't detract from it self-perpetuating nature.
...how a total lack of intelligence can look incredibly much like a conspiracy?
MicroSoft: "NT! It's so incredibly easy to administer that all you need to know how to do is point and click!"
Yeah, ok. So where is the nifty pre-packaged little button labelled "bounce all incoming and outgoing messages with the target string in the message body back to sender, with an explanation for why it has been returned"?
It is impossible to make system administration doable by a trained monkey -- there are entirely too many contingencies.
On a similar note, RAD techniques and user coddling combined lead to this kind of thing -- incredibly overly-large, overly-featured, user-coddling pieces of bit-rotted sludge that leave massive doors open, which you cannot close because the so-called "administrators" are busy clicking around with their mice all day, and we keep the users stupid so they don't know that there's a better way.
Bah.
In my view, RMS is incredibly arrogant, and the vast majority of Slashdot seems to be very immature. Granted, both of these are rather unfair statements.
As has been said earlier, arrogance among hackers is a well-known trait, especially in a culture such as ours. RMS is just living up to the personality profile. I do not begrudge him his desires at all -- I tend to agree with him alot. I just feel he could be a good deal more respectful and tactful in trying to get his way. But I'm not one to speak for arrogance; I tend to be highly arrogant myself at times.
As for Slashdot, I would like to think (and I feel it is true), that the majority of the readers are lurkers, and of a general clueful nature. But for the most part, of the ones who post, a high percentage are of the teenage know-it-all testosterone charged hate everyone who's different from you mindset, which just gets further complicated by the fact that many of them seem to believe that by just being able to install Red Hat, they are suddenly some part of a magical club in which they are a big fish. It bothers me to a high degree that Linux should be branded by these kinds of morons, where there are so many other worthwhile people out there who simply do not feel the need to prove their testicular fortitude by flaming about KDE/GNOME, RMS/ESR, or what have you, endlessly, day after day.
So, actually, I see a high degree of truth here. And I also consider it to be on par with the general level of stupidity and arrogance within the human race. It is our nature, for some sad reason.
The free software community had always been relatively closed and confined -- it seemed to only attract the cream of the crop. Now that it has become popular, every scum of the earth is drawn to it, especially those with a need to show their rebellion. The bigger a trend gets, the higher the SNR in it. We need to live with it if we ever want to achieve World Domination (which is actually not a goal I strive for -- I'd be happier with a smaller community where people are worth knowing, not unworth the bullet it would take to put them out of their misery.)
And maybe I've proven my own arrogance.